President Trump, NYC’s Biggest Hater, Says He Is Nixing Congestion Pricing

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After going into effect early this year after years of failed starts, New York City’s congestion pricing is under threat once again. President Trump has followed through on a campaign promise to target the program, which aims to reduce congestion, noise, and pollution in Manhattan and fund repairs to the city’s subways by charging drivers entering its busiest corridors.

According to a letter sent on Wednesday by Sean Duffy, Trump’s transportation secretary cited the program’s impact on working-class drivers as motivation for the decision, and told Governor Kathy Hochul he would contact the state to “discuss the orderly cessation of toll operations.” Duffy also argued the program is illegal because tolls are being used to fund the subway rather than the roadways. It is unclear whether the federal government has control over NYC’s tolling.

Early results of congestion pricing show what was to be expected, according to the city and reports from other outlets. An early survey from the New York Times found that many commuters who previously went to work by private car had adapted by switching to other modes of transportation, like commuter buses, and found their transit times had been reduced by minutes or more. And for those who continued to drive, commute times fell noticeably as well—probably explaining why new polling has found frequent commuters into the city support tolling.

Under congestion pricing, most drivers pay $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. Economists for millennia have used incentives to encourage preferred behavior, and this is nothing different. Manhattan is an island of 22 miles with a population of 1.6 million; it has to push people to the subways. And despite conservative cries that the subway is less safe than ever, the raw data simply shows otherwise. People who continue to drive are less price sensitive and will keep driving even if the price gets jacked up more, supporting subway improvements in the process.

Other cities around the world have implemented congestion pricing in prior decades with positive results, but NYC is the first city in the United States to do so. In London, which implemented congestion pricing way back in 2003, the program was initially unpopular before approval rose to 59% as locals came to appreciate newly decongested roads. The city saw a 30% decrease in traffic in the first year.

Even though congestion pricing is practical in a city like Manhattan where the subway is materially faster and roadways are constantly gridlocked—and early results show the program is working as intended—it has been turned into a partisan issue, with conservatives using congestion pricing as an opportunity to attack a major liberal city as taking away personal liberties and hurting the working class. Kamala Harris won 68% of the recent presidential vote in New York City.

President Trump has railed against NYC for a long time as an offering of red meat for his base. And his Justice Department earlier this week decided to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams, who has long sided with Trump on removing migrant populations from the city. It has been speculated that Adams will cooperate with ICE on immigration enforcement in return for escaping prosecution.

Eric Adams was always a xenophobic bigot: “[Migrants] will destroy NYC. How many of you are organized to stop what they’re doing to us? It’s going to come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted. The city we knew we’re about to lose.” pic.twitter.com/QLF4mJEJUw

— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) February 18, 2025

The city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees tolling, has already filed a lawsuit challenging the move. The agency said tolling would “continue notwithstanding this baseless effort to snatch those benefits away from the millions of mass transit users, pedestrians and, especially, the drivers who come to the Manhattan Central Business District.”

The whole thing is ironic because the GOP is supposed to be the party of states’ rights… until it is not. Why should the federal government be able to dictate whether a not a city and its residents can charge tolls to use their roads? These are not federal highways—NYC should be able to continue with its program.